You should not develop mobile games just for money

Mobile games are supposed to be fun, am I right?. You have to treat your players with respect and stop considering them a bag of money. Think how beautiful was in the ’90s when game developers actually had the intention to challenge the players and they put a lot of effort in the quality of the game.

Now, why should I pay to win?

Every big studio is doing this crappy strategy: Gameloft, King, Supercell, etc. They see every player as a bag of money. The problem is that you don’t actually have to rely on your skills to accomplish something in this game, you have to pay money in order to finish that round or increase your level. See how that stupid it sounds?

Take for example Boom Beach. This is a very nice game and I really like the idea behind, but if you don’t pay after level 8 or 9 to build those buildings and defenses faster, other players with bigger levels are going to smoke you out. This can seriously affect the game balance. To be honest for a company like Supercell, from 60 million players, only 10% matters for them, because only those players will bring money. In other words, “Fuck the rest, they are only good to support those 10% which matters to us”. There are players who spend more than 500 $ dollars just to show others that they are “better”. Of course this type of strategy will bring billions to Supercell.

I don’t even want to talk about those games which ask for 1$ or more to buy an item to let you pass a level or otherwise the game is over. Where is the respect in that, for me as a player? If you, as a developer, want to create a game like this, please stop.

Consider that in-app purchase should be entirely optional and you should not affect my gameplay later on because I didn’t pay for some upgrades. If I really like the game I might spend money to unlock some levels or buy other skins for my character.This can be a really nice strategy for freemium games.

Now, we are going to talk about indie games and small games which contain only ads. I know, money is a important factor and as an indie you need support from all players to help you develop other games in the future. The problem comes when you have to pass 4 ads before you even pressing play. I played really good games which are ruined because of frequently spammed interstitial ads. Even when exiting the game, I am forced to watch another ad. Why should I play a game like this?

I know that it is hard to develop a game, but you don’t want to drive away people from your game. Would you as a developer play such a game? You should ask me if I want to watch an ad and you should give me something in exchange as a bonus. Also place banners in a smart way so you don’t ruin the gameplay for me.
Last, there are some games with a price tag. Some of them are really really bad in quality. Think twice before you ask a price for your app, don’t get greedy here. Would you pay 5$ for your game? If you don’t then don’t ask for it.
In conclusion, we should learn to respect the people who are going to play our games.

I have been working as a software engineer in computer graphics for almost 5 years. In the free time I love playing guitar, playing video games, hiking and studying computer graphics techniques.Follow me on : Google + , Twitter, Facebook